Fake Balance: Difference between revisions

** On the DM's side come Solo monsters. Solo Monsters are supposed to represent the same challenge to a group of adventurers that 5 normal monsters do, usually by having higher defenses and four times the normal monster hit points. This didn't work. Solo monsters were derided as boring grindfests. The problems boiled down to the fact that Solo monsters had too many hit points and too few actions - a solo monster could easily be locked down by status effects and didn't have the number of actions a full crew of monsters did, but they were too tough to be taken down in a reasonable amount of time. new versions of solo monsters have more actions (up to and including extra whole turns), more resistances to status effects, slower defenses and hit points (still high, but lower than before) and more "state-changing" abilities. Still, the best use of a "[[Artifact Title|Solo]]" monster is paired with a few other normal monsters.

** For those non-players: Orbizards (or Orb Wizards) are Wizards that get a special ability as long as they wield an orb as an implement - as opposed to those who wield a staff, a wand and so on. These also get special abilities, but they weren't nearly as powerful. Orbizards could once per encounter debuff a monster's saving throw against an effect the wizard cast. To succeed on a saving throw, you have to get a 10 or higher on a d20 roll. Solo monsters get a +5 to saving throws, which means they can succeed on a 5 or higher. But the orbizard could - if he took the right items, skills and feats - debuff a monster's save by -17! So you cast "Sleep" or any spell that makes the monster unconscious and needs a save to be ended onto the enemy, couple that with your -17 to saves, and even the highest level monster in the game would need to roll a 22 to succeed. [[Impossible Task|On a d20.]] This could trivialize entire encounters, and was WAY overpowered. They errataed it out.

** Sometimes provoked intentionally in order to boost the sales of a flagging army. "HA! Imperial Guardsmen have flashbulb guns and die when breathed on!". Cue new codex. "Guardsmen are cheaper, can shoot rapidfire in ranks if they're under half range and don't move and they have better AP? Which way to the Cadia box?"

** This is the current problem with the Daemonhunters, specifically the Grey Knights. Even the book itself acknowledges that the Knights are not meant to be used as a stand-alone army, however with the new GW policy of "no allies", that is the only way to field the Knights. In addition, since the change in rules of how to play Daemons (they no longer suffered instability) the Grey Knights are effectively paying extra points for abilities that can never be used (to balance out this advantage in previous editions, Daemons gain Sustained Attack, meaning that any destroyed daemons automatically return back onto the table free of charge. However that rule ''is'' still in use).

* When ''[[Command and Conquer Red Alert 3]]'''s expansion was released the game creators specifically left out any programming to let it be multiplayer knowing full well that some of the units could be used in truly epic overpowering moves. At the top of the list was the Gunship (pretty much a flying heavy tank with either a heavy gun or machine gun), the desolator (could kill anything on the ground) and the Giga Fortress, a floating island with 6 main weapons that could transform into a flying head with a ridiculously powerful [[Wave Motion Gun]].

** ''[[Command and Conquer]]: Red Alert 2'' purposefully used something close to "Everything's Cheap". Like almost all C&C games, you still have to pump out tanks. But rather than making a bunch of rock-paper-scissors effects with units that can stop tanks, and other units which can stop the tank-stoppers but lose to tanks, they made many units which can be countered by almost anything at all, but if you use them quickly and effectively before they were countered, they could achieve a decisive result. Some games would work out with two equally powerful tank forces facing off while each player tried to be the first one to sneak a spy, hero, commando, etc, into the enemy base, secretly build up some airplanes or ships to attack his enemy's construction yard, etc.

* ''[[Super Smash Bros]]'' took a fairly simple approach to balance. In general, most characters can fit into one of three groups: [[Fragile Speedster|Fast, but light and weak]]; [[Mighty Glacier|strong and heavy, but slow]]; and [[Jack of All Stats|"balanced" characters who are somewhere in between]]. This sounds good in theory -slower characters don't have to hit as much to KO you, and are more resistant to being KO'd themselves- the problem is that fast characters generally have a much higher combo ability, which makes fighting one more difficult, especially if you're using a slow character who has trouble getting hits in between their opponent's fast attacks. This has ultimately led to complex [[Character Tiers]] appearing (despite [[Memetic Mutation|claims that "tires don exits"]]) and the [[Metagame]] being dominated by fast characters like Meta-Knight and Marth.

** This is actually ''very'' common in fighting games with [[Mighty Glacier|larger, slower characters]] finding their increased strength and durability vastly overcompensated by their inability to catch the opponent or dodge ''their'' attacks (due to their enormous hitboxes), and are most commonly [[Skill Gate Characters]].